Digital citizenship: who are our models?

How do we learn to behave online? In the case of adults, unless we take classes about this concept, it is pretty much by trial and error, and by imitation of what others do.
We emulate what we see others do. For example, a few years ago I read about a writer called Roni Lauren who blogged about her work. She used pictures she found online and wrote a disclaimer about them following what others had written on their blogs. She thought she was fine until one photographer sued her. As she mentioned in her lessons learned, she paid for a pic she did not need. She could have taken a picture herself or resorted to the use of pics used under Creative Commons (CC) licenses. She strongly advices bloggers to use CC pics so they would not have to go through what she did.
What happens with Twitter users and followers? There are a few cases that are worth taking a closer look. In the UK in 2012, a couple of journalists made allusions about a person who may have incurred in misconducts without specifying his name but providing enough details that putting two and two together was not difficult. As a result, a series of twits emerged and were retwitted creating a great scandal about this situation. The person in question was wrongly accused and he decided to take legal actions against the journalists, the person who wrote the first twit, and those who retwitted it because they had not exercised their critical thinking wisely. The interesting thing about the action the victim took was to include those who had retwitted the information because they had not taken into consideration if someone could be hurt. The distinction he made was that those writers who had only 500 followers would pay a fine and make public apologies but those who had more followers would have to pay a greater fine in addition to apologizing. What's the point here? This case left a precedent that it is not ok to twit anything and that there could be legal repercussions if one proceeds without care.
From an educational standpoint, we also learn to tweet based on what others do. So it is necessary to discuss what we see, read, and the reactions that we notice when we see tweets that are not ok. As educators, we need to engage our students in exercises that involve writing tweets and discussing their ramifications.

Digital Identity: real or fake?

                                             CC BY Andres Rueda
The first time I thought about the concept of digital identity was when I introduced the term digital footprints to my students. This means the digital bits and pieces we generate in our exchanges with others in public forums and posts we leave online. They can help move us forward in our career if we make smart moves or backwards if we choose the web as a way of venting our emotions on more personal levels.This is a great video that educator Johnson prepared a few years ago. While some of the stats may be outdated, the impact is still valid.

I have noticed that the younger generations in particular, but not exclusively, have a quite different idea of the notion of what they share publicly vs. privately as the Flacso educators eloquently analyzed in their link to Radio Program. The educators noticed that the youth do not tend to take this distinction into consideration and believe the world should be an open forum for them to say what they want. While free speech is a right for every human being, there are social protocols, also known as Netiquettes-- to follow in order to show respect for others even when disagreeing with their ideas. And what about their most inner precious struggles? Should Facebook be equated with an open psychoanalytic session (minus the coach) for others to share how to tackle the issue at hand?

What I know about digital footprints and netiquette have shaped what I share online. I understand that I am gradually building an online persona, but the question is, should it be so different from the real one? Professionally speaking, I do not think so. I believe that online platforms provide me with a venue to express ideas that can reach a wider audience than just the students in my class. Will this change? This is a question that I will continue to explore as I become an active participant of the online communities.For the moment, I tried my hand at a a poem (using Genious) in a multimedia format using Zeega. Enjoy it!